[NOTE: Statistical graph of PR membership growth accompanies article and
available via hard copy for $1]. Raw numbers at end of news release.]
NR #1996-089 Missions, New Sem Prof Headline Protestant Reformed Synod
Meeting in the Grand Rapids suburbs from June 11 to June 19, the synod of
the 6300-member Protestant Reformed Churches marked a milestone in its
history by electing Rev. Russell Dykstra as the new professor of New
Testament and church history for the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Other
synodical business included the opening of a mission field in Ghana,
organizing the Covenant Reformed Fellowship in Northern Ireland as a member
church of the denomination, and declaring a seminary graduate eligible for
call in the churches.
NR #1996-089: For Immediate Release
Missions, New Sem Prof Headline Protestant Reformed Synod
by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer
United Reformed News Service
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (July 29, 1996) URNS - The Christian Reformed synod and
the Reformed Ecumenical Council weren't the only Reformed ecclesiastical
assemblies to meet in Grand Rapids this June. From June 11 to June 19, the
6300-member Protestant Reformed denomination held its annual synod at the
facilities of Southwest Protestant Reformed Church in the Grand Rapids suburb
of Grandville.
Despite the Grand Rapids venue, nobody at the Protestant Reformed synod
advocated the ordination of women, theistic evolution, or gay marriage.
Rather, the agenda focussed on the selection of Rev. Russell Dykstra as the
new professor of New Testament and church history for the Protestant Reformed
Seminary, various mission opportunities, and the successful synodical
examination of Richard Smit, a graduate of the denominational seminary who
will now be eligible for call.
Changing of the Guard on Ivanrest Avenue
As in other Reformed denominations maintaining a seminary which all
candidates for the ministry are expected to attend, the selection of a new
seminary professor is one of the most important issues faced by the
denominational synod. If anything, that is even more true for the Protestant
Reformed, who have only had six professors in nearly seventy years teach at
the institution founded by Rev. Herman Hoeksema. The new professor of church
history will replace Prof. Herman Hanko, who has taught at the school since
1965. Hanko's 31-year tenure spanned almost half of the seventy-year history
of the denomination and included overseeing the move of the seminary from the
facilities of First PRC of Grand Rapids to its current location on Ivanrest
Avenue adjacent to Southwest PRC.
Ironically, the new appointee and the retiring professor share a similar
resume. Ordained in 1955, Hanko served two pastorates for a total of ten
years: Hope PRC in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker and Doon (IA) PRC.
Ordained in 1986 at the Doon PRC, Dykstra served there for a total of nine
years until accepting a call last November to Hope PRC of Walker.
According to Protestant Reformed denominational rules first established in
the mid-1970's to replace Homer Hoeksema, the son of Herman Hoeksema, Hanko
and his successor will share responsibilities for some time to assist in
making an orderly transition. "The rule here is when a man reaches the age of
65 the churches begin the process of calling the professor's successor, but
the professor may continue to teach on a year-by-year basis until he is 70,
depending on the discretion of the theological school committee and his
willingness to do so," said seminary rector Prof. David Engelsma in an
earlier interview. "The idea is that if a man accepts the appointment this
year, he will prepare himself for a year, and after that Prof. Hanko and the
new man will share the teaching load for a couple of years. In that way the
retiring professor can help the new man take over the subjects and the
retiring man is phased out gradually."
Dykstra said he hoped to have a productive working relationship with Hanko,
under whom he had studied in his earlier years. "I'm very thankful that I get
to work with Prof. Hanko for a number of years if the Lord wills that," said
Dykstra. "He's contributed so much to this seminary that he will be a great
help to me in setting up the courses I will be taking."
Dykstra said his goal was to keep the seminary faithful to the purposes
established by its founders. Regarded in his lifetime as one of the strongest
preachers in the Dutch Reformed world, Herman Hoeksema taught seminary
courses while simultaneously serving First Protestant Reformed Church of
Grand Rapids, at that time one of the largest congregations in Grand Rapids.
"The strong point of the Protestant Reformed seminary is the absolute
faithfulness to the historic Reformed faith but taught to prospective pastors
so it's not a purely academic training but very much a pastoral training,"
said Dykstra. "That really to me was the heart of it. The strong point of the
Protestant Reformed Churches is they have really trained strong preachers and
pastors, and that is going to be my goal in my instruction."
Dykstra said he only came to fully appreciate the pastoral emphasis of his
seminary training when he actually entered the pastorate. "There were so many
times as a minister that I would look back and realize that what I had been
taught in a certain area was so practical," said Dykstra. "I was meeting up
with a problem in the pastorate and had been trained without realizing it in
the instruction these men gave."
One consequence of that emphasis on pastoral ministry has been that the
Protestant Reformed synod has always appointed successful pastors to the
seminary faculty rather than recruiting men based on their academic degrees.
In recent years, all three of the Protestant Reformed faculty have taken
coursework from Calvin Theological Seminary and received Master of Theology
(Th.M.) degrees in their respective fields. Dykstra said he hoped to do the
same.
"I am applying to Calvin, it looks like I will be accepted in the area of
historical theology," said Dykstra. "Nobody is requiring me to do this, but
the [Protestant Reformed] seminary is making the money and the opportunity
available."
Calvin Seminary president Dr. James A. DeJong, said he had enjoyed working
with other professors at the Protestant Reformed seminary and expected the
same would be the case with Dykstra. "If he is accepted at Calvin Seminary,
as I have no doubt he would be, I anticipate that we will enjoy the same
cordial, mutually beneficial relationship with him that we have had with the
other professors of the Protestant Reformed Seminary who have all taken their
Th.M training with us," said DeJong.
Dykstra, a native of Walker and a lifelong member of the Protestant Reformed
Churches, is 42 with nine children and one grandchild. Prior to entering
seminary, he served as teacher and administrator at the Hull (IA) Protestant
Reformed Christian School.
Missionary Work
For most of its history, the primary growth of the Protestant Reformed
Churches has been biological, focussing on raising families and keeping them
in the denomination. However, in more recent years the denomination has
maintained an active home and foreign mission program.
After the closure of its Jamaican mission, the denomination has not had a
formal foreign mission field but has established a sister-church relationship
with the Evangelical Reformed Churches of Singapore and with the Protestant
Reformed Church of New Zealand, in both cases sending a missionary pastor to
labor in those countries and assist the local pastors and elders. The
Singapore relationship has been especially close in recent years due to the
relationship of Cheah Fook Meng, a member of the Singapore denomination
studying for the ministry at the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Graduating
this year from seminary, Meng will return to Singapore and be ordained in his
home denomination. The seminary has also trained ministers for the
Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia, a small denomination based in
Tasmania which shares some of the Protestant Reformed theological
distinctives, including opposition to the "free offer" of the gospel.
While formally under the auspices of the home missions rather than the
foreign missions committee, the Protestant Reformed Churches are also active
in another foreign field: Northern Ireland, where the denomination will
organize the Covenant Reformed Fellowship this summer as a member church of
the North American denomination.
Synod this year also decided to declare the African nation of Ghana to be a
mission field and to call a minister to serve as a missionary to that country
where the denomination has had contacts for a number of years with the
Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ghana, the Volta Evangelical Association,
and a number of independent groups.
"Our policy is at this point we have a corresponding secretary and each of
the ministers takes terms writing letters. We lead them through a study of
the essentials of the Reformed faith and work toward the point where we can
send a missionary there," said Rev. Alan Brummel, pastor of First PRC of
Edgerton, Minnesota, and secretary of the Protestant Reformed foreign mission
committee. "That's been being done in Ghana for a few years and we now have
the conviction that we have the manpower to work with there."
Rather than working exclusively with one of the several local denominations
with which the Protestant Reformed foreign mission committee has had contact
and raising possible future problems, Brummel said the Protestant Reformed
synod decided to begin a separate work while approving "making the missionary
available for the instruction of ministers and members of other churches."
"We have decided that rather than working with one of these groups and
trying to reform it we will try to have our own denomination right from the
start," said Brummel. "We will be sending a missionary who'll probably have
to start preaching to his family and then trying to build up a church that
would be in accord with our distinctives."
"It would be better for those who are interested to know we are going to be
singing the Psalms right from the beginning, using a good version of the
Bible, and preaching twice on Sunday," said Brummel.
If a missionary accepts the call to Ghana, he will be under the dual
jurisdiction of the synodical foreign missions committee and the Hull PRC,
which will serve as his calling church. The synod also approved sending a
voluntary layperson to assist the work of the ordained missionary and decided
to use a "suitable local radio station in Ghana" for broadcast ministry when
the missionary begins his labors.
Cross-References to Related Articles:
#1994-044: Protestant Reformed Reach Highest Membership in History
Contact List:
Rev. Alan Brummel, Pastor, First Protestant Reformed Church
251 Maple St. W., Edgerton, MN 56128
O: (507) 442-5931
Dr. James A. De Jong, President, Calvin Theological Seminary
3233 Burton St. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4387
O: (616) 957-6086 * H: (616) 957-6087 * FAX: (616) 957-8621 * E-Mail:
DEJJ@Calvin.edu
Elder Don Doezema, Stated Clerk, Protestant Reformed Churches
4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418
O: (616) 531-1490
Rev. Russell Dykstra, Professor-Elect, Protestant Reformed Seminary
1550 Ferndale SW, Grand Rapids, MI 49418
O: (616) 243-8632
Prof. David Engelsma, Rector, Protestant Reformed Seminary
4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418
O: (616) 531-1490
Prof. Herman Hanko, Professor, Protestant Reformed Seminary
4949 Ivanrest SW * Grandville, MI 49418
O: (616) 531-1490
Protestant Reformed Membership Grows 21% in Decade
1987: 5219
1988: 5316
1989: 5454
1990: 5527
1991: 5739
1992: 5894
1993: 5959
1994: 6259
1995: 6281
1996: 6318
Total churches: 27
Professing members: 3455
Total membership: 6316
Sister-Church Relationships:
Evangelical Reformed Churches of Singapore:
Total Churches: 2
Total membership: 324
Protestant Reformed Church of New Zealand:
Total Churches: 1
Total membership: n/a
Covenant Reformed Fellowship of Northern Ireland
[to be organized as member church of PRC, July 24, 1996]
Total Churches: 1
Total membership: 8 families
Source: Don Doezema, Stated Clerk, Protestant Reformed Churches
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